Ski patrol veteran dies after avalanche at California resort

(Reuters) - A veteran ski patroller who was buried in an avalanche during a safety exercise at a California resort on Monday has died, the resort said in a statement on Tuesday.

Bill Foster, 53, died at Renown Regional Medical Center in Reno, Nevada, according to a statement from Alpine Meadows, a resort near Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

Foster, who was a ski patroller for 28 years, was part of a team who were performing “routine snow safety” in the Sherwood Bowl area of the resort Monday morning when an avalanche was triggered by an explosive charge thrown by a senior patroller.

Foster was uncovered within eight minutes and efforts were made to resuscitate him, the resort said.

The area was closed to the public at the time of the avalanche, which broke “much higher and wider on the slope than previously observed in past snow safety missions,” the resort said.